St Michael's Church, Workington

St Michael's Church at Workington in Allerdale, Cumbria, was a difficult church for me to date. The outside seemed not so old, but the internals hosted a medieval alabaster tomb and even older debris from the Viking period. The pews and furnishings were of lighter wood, suggesting modernity. In 1887 and 1994, the church suffered destruction by fire (though I suspect that, since the site has been occupied by Christian worshippers since the 600s, there were even more burnings, not least courtesy of our aforementioned Viking ancestors). We therefore have a Georgian church structure with rebuilding and redecorating from the 1880s, 1930s and 1990s. It is a wonder the church is still open and it continues to function: all credit to those who cleared away the charred remains and started afresh.

In First Corinthians chapter 3, the apostle uses the phrase ‘by fire’ several times when describing the actions we perform in this life and their ability (or failure) to outlive destruction:

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. (vv12-15)

Although I speak of St Michael’s only as a building, the wider ‘church’, by which I mean the global, timeless family of the redeemed people of God, is also tested and well-nigh destroyed by fire: persecutions, heresies, compromise et al. Yet it survives, and always shall do, though the gates of hell sally forth. Yet I bear little responsibility for the wider church, though I am responsible for my own life. When the fire of difficulty comes, be that in the form of present problems or future illness and dying, may that which is most previous- my relationship to God through Jesus the Christ, be preserved and magnified.

A D